We are living in dangerous times. The world is on the brink of another Great Depression. The excesses of the Bush administrations and the lack of discipline in spending more (going into a war started against Iraq) together with a populist approach to cutting taxes for the rich mirrors the same greed and short term thinking that is prevalent in a banking and investment system which went wild.

The lack of fiscal prudence and proper regulations, together with excessive greed in the highest echelon of the Wall Street community on top of the explosion of the financial WMD (weapons of mass destruction)- the derivatives market, means that we are now at the very brink.

The $700 billion bailout plan is barely enough to clear the mess of the Lehman Brothers collapse. It shows plainly that no country can afford another bank failure of the same scale or even a few smaller banks in succession. This is because the credit default swap, a form of derivative, will exacerbate and multiple the effect of the bank failure.

To just protect existing deposits is no longer enough. To encourage bank mergers is again no longer enough. To buy bank toxic sub prime mortgages is again, no longer enough. It is too late for all that, although it will help.

The governments of the world need to look closer at the derivative markets. To shut it down to ensure that no more new problems occur, while at the same time put a value at say 50% or lower from the time the whole mess started when the sub prime crisis occurred. The governments cannot afford to put its value at 0% for the ripple effects will kill the banks and shut off all forms of credit available to businesses for their normal cash flow operations. And this value has to be fixed for ALL derivatives and be guarantee by ALL nations, if not the group of seven countries have to start by doing the guarantee and get more nations on board. And all the holdings of the derivatives will be held by the governments with the IMF or the International Bank as the holder, while the banks or financial firms will be pledged the value of the derivatives by the central banks.

At one stroke, it will free up all the toxic debts hanging around the necks of firms and re-liquidate these banks and financial firms. Also, these money provided by the central banks will be on condition that the banks use it for lending and investments purposes and not for hoarding. This will restart investment and consumption so that the economy will not come to a standstill.

The banks can no longer do much to help themselves, although it could have been the case just three months earlier. Now it is the time of central banks and governments of the world to come together to unstuck the derivative markets and financial credit.

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